even your odd evasion of erotic love now, is telling of how erotic love, leading to relationships is almost shameful. — schopenhauer1
sex addict — schopenhauer1
:up: — schopenhauer1
:lol:Dear me, when was I evading erotic love? — BC
Well, OK, thanks, but it doesn't answer why one should prefer an unloving life to a loving one (or else a loving life over an unloving one) - irrespective of the type of love addressed. I deem this to be a rather important question. But maybe its just me. — javra
Do words have to "be" the things they refer to have content? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Do words necessarily have to refer to unique things or can they refer to general principles/universals — Count Timothy von Icarus
Moreover, can't they refer to sets, potentially sets of universals that share properties? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Would it likewise be absurd to discuss energy because it can be broken down into kinetic energy, nuclear, electric, etc.? — Count Timothy von Icarus
That people can disagree on the meanings of words or sensory data doesn't really say much because some people will disagree about virtually everything. — Count Timothy von Icarus
And yet it seems like there must be some causal explanation underlying the application of the same word to diffuse states and some causal explanation for how people generally understand these words so easily. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't agree at all that people would be at a total loss if someone were to say they are experiencing "pain" and they failed to specify which type of pain. They still have an idea of what is being referenced. — Count Timothy von Icarus
"Invented concepts," cannot be free floating from the world unless language is causally distinct. — Count Timothy von Icarus
is the argument that words only have meanings to the extent that they are operationalized? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Surely, people can be "more right," about describing things than others, — Count Timothy von Icarus
No I agree with you. That doesn't negate that it causes suffering nonetheless. I never said "thus we don't need eros". Rather, it is part of being alive as a human. Even ignoring, downplaying, or eradicating love from one's life (or attempts thereof), is having to deal with love, but in the "negative" sense of negating it. One is still contending with it on sociological and personal level. — schopenhauer1
why one should prefer an unloving life to a loving one (or else a loving life over an unloving one) - irrespective of the type of love addressed. — javra
Run of the mill sex with a casual partner usually didn't pose a threat to a settled relationship. What did pose a threat was great sex with a casual partner--it tended to pull one's interest away from the person one was most committed to, giving rise to jealousy and resentment.
How does any committed relationships last under these circumstances? They last IF both partners are committed to each other, without being exclusive. Also, as couples age, the attraction of casual partners diminishes. Casual sex takes time, and having a home, a partner, pets, a job, an exercise routine, civic / religious activities, etc. just doesn't leave time and energy for sexual adventures on the side. — BC
This stipulated wrongness however, whatever it might be agreed to be, then directly applies to the affirmation that love (even if strictly understood as eros) is just another avenue toward suffering. It’s then a difference that makes no difference whatsoever. But underlying this is the far broader issue just mentioned.
All this being relevant to the issue I initially raised, which I summed up in my last post as that of: — javra
Indeed, but my point was that we should not conflate eros with any one part of those 4 parts, otherwise it isn't love. Sexual adventure is just that, sex... Physical acts of a sexual nature. Just because it is with someone else, doesn't make it eros.
A strong emotional bond with someone can also be a kind of love. But if it is not sexual or physical in nature, it's hard to call that eros. A deep kind of Platonic love (philia perhaps?) would characterize this better.
A strong physical attraction without any emotional bond or sex is simply a sort of crush.
A relationship without attraction or sex, would deflate back to a friend.
That's all I'm saying. We can convolute it all we want but my conclusion was that if that is the case, then as you point out, this 1-4 necessity of eros to obtain causes quite a bit of strife for parties involved who seek eros. And as I stated, males are socially supposed to be quite stupid when it comes to how it works, and emotionally indifferent to wanting it. Females are socially supposed to be more open about finding love, and having 1-4 obtain. Perhaps they are often the gatekeeper for how 1-4 traditionally plays out. In the gay community, this may look a bit different, especially if males are generally indifferent to 1-4, and women are hypersensitive to it. Obviously this is generalizing and caricaturizing, but there may be truths to cliches and not because they are innate necessarily, but because it is how men and women are socialized. — schopenhauer1
Is there a single source for the "love urge" be it for one's child, one's friend, one's brother, for 'the world', for whatever it is that we love?
How is erotic love -- or raw eros, for that matter -- related to the other types of love?
Is there 'a basic love' that differentiates in various ways, given the circumstances, or do the various kinds of love arise separately? (seems unlikely to me). — BC
As for erotic love -- my theory is that eros begins as a raw form and is gradually tamed, civilized. Who does the taming, the civilizing? Parents? Not mine -- they didn't talk about sex. School? God, no. The church. God forbid. Who, then?
Eros gets civilized, tamed, during sexual interactions--in the trenches, as it were. Other people set the limits on what they find acceptable or out of bounds, and since we want their approval / cooperation... whatever, we conform to their standards. — BC
In contrast, take a person who has lived a very protected life or has lived in an institution from childhood into adulthood, say, owing to disability or MI. They are liable to display inappropriate sexual behavior because they haven't been out and about enough. By "inappropriate" I mean they don't "read the room" very well. — BC
If suffering is to be deemed bad, and if all endeavors inevitably lead to suffering regardless of their quality, effort, and means—as Schopenhauer and you maintain—then on what grounds are love-antagonistic endeavors, such as that of becoming a mass murderer, to be proscribed in favor of love-cherishing endeavors, for both endeavors will share the exact same attribute of resulting in suffering, making the first category of endeavors just as preferable as the second.
(To spell things out a little clearer, what I’ve been repeatedly asking you is a morality question of how any ethical ought can be obtained given the premises you uphold. And yes, most will in simplistic terms maintain that love (be it pure agape or else agape-endowed storge, philia, or eros) in general is a good, whereas malice in general is a bad. But, again, why should this generalization be upheld when both necessarily result in the same bad outcome? It’s a simple enough question regarding reasoning.) — javra
Do you disagree that love is an abstraction abstracted from, ultimately, concrete particulars? — javra
It’s often been said that “love is nothin’ more than chemicals in the brain”. But then, what of anything cognitive—percepts, convictions, thoughts, disdains, etc.—that relies upon the brain’s operations doesn’t consist of neurotransmitters? — javra
One form of this which is relatively commonly known to moderners being that of “God = Love (this rather than an omnipotent and omniscient male psyche somewhere up in the skies)”. — javra
If it is, then as abstraction it will hold its own properties which equally apply to all subspecies of love, each its own abstraction, which in turn will each hold properties applicable to, ultimately, concrete particulars — javra
Love, then, would be endowed with a fixed set of universal attributes relative to what it is an abstraction of in like manner to how animal, for example, is so endowed. — javra
I think you just present a false dichotomy or odd straw man. — schopenhauer1
As one example of how this dictum is often ill-fit, sustaining equality of rights FORCES direct harm onto tyrants—but this doesn’t justify a morality in which tyrants are given the freedom to tyrannize. — javra
The perspective is simply that of an individual subject’s reason for choosing between future acts of malice and future acts of love—this when both are deemed to hold the same bad consequence of suffering for the individual subject in question.
But I get the impression that we’re on very different wavelengths here. Pity in a way, since I believe that the topic of love and suffering is rich with nuances and, indeed, with exceptions—thereby justifying the prescription of love over malice. But so be it then. — javra
Later in the same post, you went on to clarify the distinction between "strong-like" and "unity of being". This wasn't your attempt at an exhaustive list, and I'm confident there are many more distinct perspectives on love that you could bring up, but even so, you effortlessly brought up so many.
Isn't that true? It's confusing to be asked whether love is "an abstraction...", you should know that there's more than just one. Explain your thoughts on this. — Judaka
You've agreed with me that ethics plays a role. This alone destroys any chance for love having consistent properties. Think about it, how can ethics influence our interpretation of an intensely personal feeling? The same feeling could exist in two scenarios, classified as love in one, and not the other, because of how we interpret what makes a relationship toxic or unhealthy. Are these the properties you're referring to? — Judaka
If there's even a single truth condition that's dependant upon interpretation then the properties you refer to include factors that differ by person. — Judaka
That's what gives a term like "animal" its universal attributes, they're universal because they do not differ by person. Each organism that qualifies to be an animal must have these properties. — Judaka
Thought this video might be appropriate here. I enjoyed and was inspired by it. — 0 thru 9
Yet this Sufi understanding of love would then be entirely contingent on what one makes of, else how one interprets, the term “God”. For instance, if "God" is understood in a more Brahman-like way, then a mutually shared romantic love (with its erotic sex included) will be one aspect of love thus understood. — javra
At any rate, the video presents what is to me a pleasant alternative to the often-touted motif that one ought to have “fear of God”. Love as longing for unity with God, as the Sufis can be said to hold, and, on the other hand, the need to constantly hold a fear of God will generally lead to two very disparate and in many ways contradictory worldviews. (Via a very rough analogy, loving one's parent is a very different form of respect than that which occurs via fearing one's parent.) — javra
Apropos, what then do you make of the proposition that "love obliterates ego in due measure with it's strength"? Otherwise stated, that one looses oneself with the attribute of love in due measure to the love's strength. This furthermore varying with the type of love addressed. — javra
As relates to the English term "love", I so far maintain that it can only bifurcate into "unity of being" of various types and into "strong-liking-of", which again can come in various types. Both seem to me to belong to the umbrella concept - itself an abstraction - of "affinity" but that, whereas "love" can be a verb, "affinity" cannot - to my mind partly explaining why love can in English be used in both senses. — javra
I so far find the same can be said of consciousness, for example. — javra
I myself don't situate thing in terms of ethics playing a role in love, but of love playing an integral role in ethics. I'm coming from the vantage that love, unity of being, is ethical - in so far as being good, — javra
The more we deviate from the ideal of love should be, the worse, and so more bad, the situation becomes, despite the feelings held. — javra
But I grant that this plays into an ontological interpretation of love which doesn't fit that of it strictly being a biologically evolved set of emotions or feelings. And it might be this which we at base actually disagree on (?). — javra
To give just two examples of how "animal" doesn't hold universal attributes as abstraction among all people that utilize the term. — javra
But yet when looked at more impartially, what an animal is can be pinpointed with relative stability, this as biology does. — javra
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